Add local environment setup guide to QA strategy

[rud3ka]

Summary

Adds a step-by-step local environment setup guide to the QA Strategy section.

The guide was written based on hands-on testing of the Docker Compose setup and covers all non-obvious steps that are missing or incorrect in the current development-environment README.

Key things documented:

• Which repos to clone and with exactly what folder names
• secrets/trusted_certificates.pem must exist before docker compose up
• Dummy Root CA must be added to trusted certs for authentication to work
• Local API (/api/v1/local/admins) is only accessible via docker exec — not from the host machine
• ssl-client-cert header requires URL-encoded certificate value
• Troubleshooting table covering all common failure modes

Why this belongs in QA Strategy

This guide serves as the entry point for anyone setting up the platform for testing — including new QA engineers and candidates completing take-home assignments. Having it in the QA Strategy section establishes it as the authoritative setup reference for testing purposes.

Test plan

• Follow the guide from scratch on a clean machine
• Verify all services reach healthy status
• Verify admin creation via docker exec
• Verify API authentication with ssl-client-cert header

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

[CLAassistant]

All committers have signed the CLA.

[3keyroman]

Hi @rud3ka , I believe this should be part of https://github.com/OmniTrustILM/development-environment. In case it is needed here, I would keep it only as link to development-environment to avoid future conflicts when the development-environment will be updated and duplicated information.

[rud3ka]

Hi @3keyroman! Thank you for the feedback! I'd like to share a few reasons why I believe this guide belongs here.

This is the start of our QA documentation space. The docs/qa-strategy/ section is where we plan to build a QA-owned knowledge base — test conventions, automation guides, onboarding for new QA engineers and candidates. This local setup guide is the first entry point. Without it, that space has no foundation.

The audience is different. The development-environment README is written for developers who already know the system. This guide is written for someone who is setting up the platform for the first time specifically to write tests — a QA candidate or a new team member. The tone, level of detail, and goal are different.

We filled in the blanks. We went through the setup hands-on and discovered several missing or incorrect steps — the trusted CA setup, the URL-encoding requirement for the certificate, the docker exec requirement for the Local API, and others. None of these were in the development-environment README at the time. We fixed the README too (PR #13), but this guide reflects the full picture in a streamlined, step-by-step format that a newcomer can actually follow without getting stuck.

Happy to discuss further — but I think keeping this guide here serves the QA team and candidates in a way the README alone doesn't.

[lubomirw]

Code review: 2 issue(s) found.

[lubomirw]

Hi @rud3ka , I believe this should be part of https://github.com/OmniTrustILM/development-environment. In case it is needed here, I would keep it only as link to development-environment to avoid future conflicts when the development-environment will be updated and duplicated information.

After discussion with @rud3ka, we will keep it as part of QA documentation for now. Consolidation and refactoring of QA-dedicated section of documentation would be anyway necessary and part of that will be also changes regarding environment setup.